


Not Enough

by peterwithextrapickles



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Takes Place Before Infinity War, Whump, but this does not fall into that, i ship peter parker with catching a break for once, miles morales cameo, this made me sad to write, v brief tony stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-03 01:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19453360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterwithextrapickles/pseuds/peterwithextrapickles
Summary: Request: “lotsa chaos. big threat to a lot of people. peter does his best to evacuate the civilians and gets real fukyn beat up. he comes back to the scene of the crime exhausted and ready to just pick up his backpack to find the bodies of people that he overlooked (or dont ik this is hard bb ily ur writins regardless)”





	Not Enough

“ _ Warning: Continuing to fight in this condition will mostly likely result in your death. If the situation worsens, I will automatically go into Instant Kill, regardless of your preference via Mama Bear Protocol,”  _ Karen warned. Peter swore under his breath.  _ This couldn’t be happening. _ All around he heard panicked shouts and screams of his neighbors. People he’d walked past who knows how many times. 

His borough was burning, and Peter was helpless to stop it.

Everywhere around him, he swore he saw familiar faces. He saw MJ in the girl carrying her little sister in her arms as she ran. He heard Flash in a distant cry. May’s hair whipped past his left side. Ned’s hat lay scattered on the ground. 

Peter knew it wasn’t them, it couldn’t be, but each time his heart stopped a tiny bit. The second his spidey senses started tingling, he’d texted everyone he knew to get out of Queens as fast as possible, and he knew most of them trusted him enough to do as he’d asked. Still, the  _ what if _ would suffocate him until the danger passed. 

“Get out,” Peter croaked, as loudly as he could. Okay, maybe Karen had a point. The bad guys had left him a little worse for wear, but they were still out there. They were still hurting people, and he had to do something.  _ Anything.  _

A loud crash sounded from afar, but still far too close to home. Peter raced towards it as fast as his webs could carry him. “ _ Warning: Web fluid low. Mama Bear Protocol activated in T-minus ten minutes.”  _ Peter was on his last cartridge, fiercely holding a hand to his largest gash, but he couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when so many people were at stake. He was almost there when he tasted blood. 

He saw the criminal whose hand he’d webbed to the car trunk and left, Aaron, holding the hand of a much smaller kid wearing a Spider-Man hoodie.  _ His nephew.  _ They were getting away as fast as they could, but the kid's short legs weren't fast enough. Aaron nodded at Peter as he swung past, and Peter waved. “Look, it’s Spider-Man!” The kid’s excitement made Peter smile a little bit in spite of everything. It made Peter think they might all make it out.

Peter wanted to call out something like “Stay in school!” but that sounded too lame (even for him). He tried to salute the kid, but he’d already swung too far away to be in sight, and he had to focus. He had to stop them. So the kid and everyone else would make it out of here. 

Peter finally caught up to the bad guys. They wore plain masks and all-black clothes; it was their weaponry that was unique. Clearly leftover from the Vulture’s empire, the weapons had managed to raze half of Queens. 

Peter swung around them. He might not be able to stop them like this, but he could at least distract them enough to get more people out of there. They fired at him, missing all but once. Fortunately, not with one of the guns that immediately killed, but it fucking hurt like hell. At least if they were hurting him, they weren’t hurting anyone else. ( _"If you're gonna shoot at someone, shoot at me."_ )

Suddenly, he heard the sound of gunshots. Not from them, from a nearby cop who’d tried to be a hero. Peter saw her hand tremble against the trigger, even as she kept firing. There were bulletproof. She wasn't. A flash of electric blue light hit her, right in the chest. She screamed right up until her corpse hit the ground.

Everything slowed. His heart, previously rivaling the speed of light, seemed to stop entirely. His breath caught on the lump in his throat. Every sound deafened to a dull roar. Even his blood had turned to an icy sludge. The only part of him that felt alive was his stomach, churning up into knots. 

_ Someone had died. _ Of course, he’d known people had to have died already. Of course. But some small part of him had clung desperately to the idea that everyone had managed to survive. That everyone still might get out of this, and things might be okay. 

Peter didn’t notice the highly specialized gun pointed right as his largest open gash. He didn’t notice the sound of it firing up. Peter didn’t notice Karen warning him about Mama Bear Protocol about to activate, and he certainly didn’t notice the ever-loudening sounds of jets rushing towards him. 

Peter only noticed as the ground disappeared, an empty Iron Man suit carrying him away to safety as the real Iron Man quickly took out the bad guys. “No! I have to get those people out of there! Put me back!” The suit didn’t respond, since FRIDAY was only piloting Peter to Manhattan, and Tony was down there. Fighting because Peter had failed.

  
  
  


A day later, after begging May to let him out, after a lot of medical treatment, after promising to go as Peter, after hundreds upon hundreds of compromises, Peter was back in his neighborhood. While a lot was still intact, many of the buildings were in shambles. All the fire had been put out, but even though it was autumn, the air felt too hot. Someone thrust a mask into Peter’s hands to filter the debris and smoke. 

Peter turned a corner into where most of the action had taken place, and he might as well have been watching the officer die all over again. “No,” Peter whispered so quietly that he might have been talking to ghosts. There were hundreds of people amongst the bits of concrete and ash, but not enough of them were alive. 

The sight of them hurt worse than the scent. Peter knew there had been more casualties than were here, he saw coroners carrying bodies by the dozen into vans. Bodies of people he failed to save. 

All of the “if only”s haunted Peter’s thoughts like the Reaper.  _ If only he’d been better. If only he’d been more capable. If only he hadn’t attracted those villains there in the first place.  _

There was no question about why they had come. They might as well have spelled out “Spider-Man” in bullets on the walls of every standing building. They had chosen the areas of Queens Peter frequented most. They had chosen to hit Spider-Man where it hurt. This was all his fault. 

If he’d done a better job tracking down the Vulture’s buyers, if he hadn’t been so public, so  _ arrogant  _ about taking in the Vulture, if he’d done anything differently, this wouldn’t have happened. All of this blood was on his hands. 

In the rubble, a bright red and blue Spider-Man hoodie stuck out. The same one the kid had been wearing. Peter’s gut twisted sickly, and his insides had become a void, caving him in from the inside out. 

Peter’s knees buckled, and he fell to the ground. He keeled over, dry-heaving up all the breakfast he didn’t have. He couldn’t stand, but he knew the EMT’s and other emergency responders still roaming were too busy trying to fix his undoable mess to pay him any attention. 

His borough had burned, and Peter hadn’t done enough to save it. 


End file.
